Q&A: “How do I focus on retaining clients?”

Today's question comes from a CPA who has already done the hard part: he's built a small, loyal client base. Most business owners spend their energy chasing new customers. Fewer stop to ask what keeps the ones they already have.

Hi, this is Jim Buttenfield from Kansas City, Missouri. I'm a CPA and have built a small but loyal group of clients over the past two years since leaving my job as a cost accountant for a big company. I love working for myself and would like to have a few more consistent clients, but rather than focus on growth, I want to make sure I keep the clients I have. Most of them are small business owners, and they keep me pretty busy. Most retention advice I've seen includes recommendations like “send them cookies during the holidays.” I have no objection to cookies, but I tend to think the valuable work I do for them is a lot more, well, valuable. So aside from bribing my clients to stick around, do you have any other advice?

Small touches do matter, even cookies. But what keeps clients isn't the holiday gesture, it's what happens the rest of the year, especially when someone pays on retainer or a monthly fee. My own CPA is the model: she flags tax changes before they become a problem, digs into whether a new rule will help or hurt her clients, and stays available. Compare that to a previous accountant who surfaced once a year at tax season and sent cookies that weren't even good. The cookies didn't fix the relationship — they came to feel less like a gift and more like an irritant.

The question worth asking, over and over, is plain: how can you add value to this relationship right now? Jim is already asking it. Anyone doing the same is ahead of most service providers, holiday cookies or not.

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